Dir| Patric Chiha | France Doc 2026
Directed by France’s Patric Chiha, A Russian Winter (Un Hiver russe) is a poignant 2026 drama premiering at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in the Panorama section.
We hear a great deal about this 2022 invasion from Ukrainian side but this time the impact is seen from from the point of view of a group of Russians who have chosen exile from their homeland rather than military service or the harsh reality if prison.
The raging battlefield is very faraway but the film captures the existential drift of Margarita and Yuri who are lost in a stateless limbo unable to move forward with their lives or feel any sense of achievement in a world that does not really accept them. The psychological impact is undeniable and the loss of identity palpable, they experience a sense of internalised grief in this physical disconnection from their friends and family forcing them to cling to each other via the internet in their peripatetic wanderings throughout Georgia, Turkey and France to escape the listlessness of their stasis.
In his raw dehumanising and disorienting portrait of disconnectedness Chiha uses neon washed images in in green, purple, orange and pink with techno-soundscape to capture the static suffocating all-pervading winter of the characters, and this mirrors the political chill with a sober cinematic aesthetic. War engulfs Margarita and Yuri in a daily passive onslaught of numbness; their performances are intensely powerful but at the same time restrained. Their self-imposed exile is invasive and homesickness is bitterly felt but there is no alternative to this mindless prison.
BERLINALE FILM FESTIVAL 2026 | Panorama | February 17